Rock Textures at Little Tor, Gower

Little Tor cliff at the east end of Oxwich Bay in Gower, South Wales, is made of Carboniferous Limestone of the Hunts Bay Oolite Sub Group. In common with beach outcrops of the same type of rock at Broughton on the north Gower coast, and Tenby that lies further west in Pembrokeshire, the surface is marked on a small scale with scalloped depressions and branching runnels that are the result of acid erosion and sand abrasion, giving rise to interesting textures and patterns.

The small sinuous etchings are called microrills (Ford and Williams 2007). They are typically 1 mm wide, round bottomed dissolution channels that are found close together. The pattern is reminiscent of rain running down a window pane. On gentle rock slopes they have curving paths and divide and rejoin in a network-like pattern. On steeper gradients the channels are straighter. Some microrills are made by slightly acidic water flowing down the rock surface but in other instances they are caused by the “water moving upwards, drawn by capillary tension exerted at an evaporating front. Capillary flow is believed to explain much of their characteristic sinuosity”.

REFERENCE

Ford, D. and Williams, P. (2007) Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, England. Revised Edition, p324.  ISBN 978-0-470-84997-2.